Monday, October 27, 2008

After about 12 years of being in love with this band, this was a big deal. And it was a pretty great show and a good time out overall. For once, none of my usual social hangups or physical ailments (headaches, backaches, swollen bladder, etc.) threatened to ruin the experience, even through waiting for four hours outside the Aragon Ballroom and two hours at the very front of the crowd.

Good travelling companions, shitty scene kids in skinny jeans all around us, awful opening band, surprisingly quick and unexpected appearance by MBV after them, tears in my eyes a few times, the "Holocaust," after-show milkshakes, that feeling of closure after so many years of waiting for this... but maybe nothing else to say that wasn't already said by scores of fans in the weeks before the show. I'd rather not pour out my deepest feelings or personal opinions about it all here. No one is waiting to read them and every time I've ever shared anything personal online, I feel like I've lost something spiritually.

If I don't have anything interesting to say about this show, I should probably reconsider my future in blogging, or at least step back from this one for a while. It wasn't an amazing, life-changing experience, but I can't criticize it either. Reading comments online about the sound quality of the Aragon, the "boring" strobe lights, or the unadventurous set list just makes me tired of the Internet and blogger culture. What a horrible, distracting waste of time and imagination.

I guess that if it does lead me to blog less, then overall I should have an easier time completely extricating myself from the Internet altogether in the coming months. In that respect, maybe this was a life-changing experience.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

By the end of this I was surprised to find out that it wasn't an official video commissioned by the band, but one made by a fan. If it wasn't for a school project, it might be easier to admire as a labor of love, but it perfectly captures the mood, the style, the complete mythos of Belle & Sebastian. Perhaps a little too well.

Part of me always wanted this idealized culture (bookish young Anglos on the dole) to become a participatory fantasy in the same way that steampunk, cosplay, or LARPing have. Or maybe I just really like girls in sweaters.